John Doyle: Edwards ready to get back to hockey routine

Thursday

Jan 17, 2013 at 3:15 AMJan 17, 2013 at 11:38 AM

Surely there were many New England Patriots fans happy to see the Baltimore ravens stun the Denver Broncos in last week's AFC divisional playoff. But none happier than Boston Bruins television play-by-play man Jack Edwards.

While the 113-day NHL lockout was a bummer for pro hockey fans, it turned Edwards's life upside down. Edwards, a graduate of Oyster River High School and the University of New Hampshire, was one of only two NESN employees not to be paid during the lockout. (Edwards's booth partner and fellow UNH alum and former Wildcat hockey player Andy Brickley was the other).

So Edwards's wife, Lisa, took on some freelance work behind the scenes with the NFL Network, requiring her to travel to wherever the playoffs were played. And since the Edwardses home school their three kids, Justin Tucker's overtime kick to beat the Broncos (and the Patriots' subsequent win over the Texans) was much appreciated in the Edwards household.

“You marry a woman because you appreciate her in so many different ways,” Edwards said in a telephone interview from his home in Connecticut. “My wife went from zero to 80, like a sports car. It's incredible what she has done. If she couldn't pull this off, we're in trouble.”

Edwards knows he has it better than most among those (other than coaches and players) who count on an NHL season to make a living. But his story highlights the unseen chaos caused by the whole debacle. He told a story about an employee at the TD Garden with whom he is friendly.

“She works concessions and she works three jobs. Last season she had just gotten through her second round of chemo,” Edwards said. “And she's a single mother. She lost 13 nights of work because of this. I don't need to go on, do I?”

A longtime broadcaster of many sports on many different networks, Edwards is a certified hockey nut. He's thrilled to be back calling Bruins games on NESN (starting this Saturday against the Rangers), but he, like many fans, is exasperated that the lockout lasted as long as it did.

“How could the trigger pullers on this thing do what they did to hockey?” Edwards said. “How could they do that? It begs the question — do the guys at the top really love the game? It makes you wonder.”

What baffled Edwards most about the lockout was how unnecessary it all seemed. After the Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011 and the Los Angeles Kings the following year, interest in the sport was at an all-time high and teams were signing players to record contracts.

“The last three champions were Chicago, Boston and L.A. Seven different Stanley Cup champions in seven years since the last lockout (in 2005),” he said. “The train had more passengers and was carrying more valuable freight than it had since it left the station like 90 years ago when this thing became a league.

“For a league to be as healthy as it was after fans have spent so much of disposable income in the crappiest economy we have known in our lives, unless you're my father's age, it left me dumbstruck,” he continued. “I would wake up in every morning in disbelief that it was going on.”

As far as the league's immediate future, Edwards said pro hockey will continue to be a draw in traditional markets such as Boston, New York and Detroit and in Canada.

“In major hockey markets, the game could go away for two years and it would still be the hottest ticket in town,” he said. “You get this game in your soul and you can't separate it. You can read the Canadian blogs and the fan comments and there are people who say they'll never go back. I would put money against that, and I'm not a betting man.”

It's non-traditional hockey markets like Dallas and Phoenix that have Edwards worried.

“Dallas has a bad building because it's huge and it's a non-traditional hockey market,” he said. “The team is OK but not great, and there's nothing about it that makes you say 'Oh my God, I gotta see that team play.' Places like Florida, which had a really good season last year but has fallen off the radar, right after they made the playoffs for the first time since the last lockout. Teams like Columbus, just getting off the ground. Nashville is completely overextended financially.”

Edwards said he frets a 'bi-polar reaction' to the lockout, where the big winners fill the buildings and continue to get high TV ratings, while the non-traditional markets continue to struggle unless they make a surprising run at the Stanley Cup. He said he hopes to see more franchises leave weak hockey markets and go to where the game is better appreciated, such as when the Atlanta Thrashers moved to Winnipeg in 2011.

“You gotta go where they love you,” he said. “And the sooner the NHL gets that message and allows weak franchises to move to strong areas of interest, the better everyone will do.”

As for this year's Bruins team, Edwards said the window is open for the team to make another run at the Cup.

“You have to look at every successful team — they have a window to win a championship,” Edwards said. “For the Bruins, that window is based on the stability Zdeno Chara gives the entire team. The more times Doug Hamilton and Zdeno Chara can wear the same uniform, the better the prospects are for a championship. It was very important this season was played for the Bruins.”

Another big key for the Bruins is how well goalie Tuukka Rask performs in his first year as the team's No. 1 netminder.

“We've seen that in 10-12 game spurts, the guy can be as good as anybody on the planet,” Edwards said. “When he's on it, it just seems that the puck is going to hit him. He's so solid and so smooth that you can see why, since he was a teenager, people said this guy is going to be great. He's waited his entire career, and has worked very hard his entire career, to have the chance that he's got right now.”

Despite the damage the league did to itself with the lockout, in the long run Edwards thinks the game of hockey will rise above the pettiness.

“This game gets in your soul like very few other events in sports do,” Edwards said. “The places where the fans are crazy about it, they'll always be crazy about it.”

And so will Edwards.

John Doyle is a staff sports writer and editor at Foster's Daily Democrat. Follow him on Twitter @JohnDoyle603 and email him at jdoyle@fosters.com.